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Captain Paranoia
Captain Paranoia is a simple caricature of authority, and the most one dimensional of the cast (apart from the Monster - and even then, it's not so Monstrous in the end). He's pretty much just a stereotype. That eagle crest on his chest was simply the most authoritive logo I could find in the LEGO set. I think I wore out about three of them in the course of the production (as well as four or five L's and two or three P's) so I didn't go to the effort of making a custom front. In hindsight, I really should have. There have been a few people wondering if he was some kind of German/Nazi reference or something. Those critiques caught me completely off guard. Of course not, I say - but in the back of my mind is an filmmaker contemplating his mostly Anglo-Saxon British colonial education and thinking twice about it... Now there's a bit of a tale behind the Captain. He was eventually voiced by Paul Bryant, one of my high school teachers who also doubled as a part time opera singer. He was a replacement for fellow film student Jay Plaicing, who got halfway through the Captain's recordings before his contribution was cut short due to circumstances beyond my control. I feel Jay easily made the best Captain. I'd tried a few recordings before I wisely gave up trying to do everything myself. Jay was a mature age student who lived on the edge, had had a rough time of it, and was a bit volatile. His Captain had the same extraordinary edge to it - his roars and shouts had depth and presence - which, coming from a LEGO character suddenly gave them quite a bit of presence and a real sense of character. This wasn't just some vocal rabbiting going on in the background - but a genuine Paranoid Captain! His being flushed away by the Plasticene had an amazing despairing edge to it - and his angry outbursts against the L's silliness were just fantastic. I think I cut much of the actual visuals around his voice, before I had to re-record because... ...Jay disappears mid way through the year. Weeks pass, and no one knows where he's got to. He doesn't show for his classes, and there's a worryingly finality about the complete lack of information, or even a single rumour. Then, one day, we all assemble for our film tutorial and the whole class is electric with the news: Jay Plaicing had played a starring role - on Australia's Most Wanted! Yep, he had been "recaptured" by police (or had surrendered to them when they cornered him, or something) after pole-vaulting over the wall in Pentridge in New South Wales (thats what I heard!) and then vanishing for several years to the chagrin of the local authorities. Unbeknownst to all, he'd travelled to west to WA, (the Sandgroper state that, as far as the "Eastern Staters" are concerned, sits in an alternate dimension), got himself enrolled at Curtin Uni and was busily furthering his education. Um. No more Captain Paranoia. It explained quite a bit about Jay though, but alas, I had to break the glass and break out the emergency back up voice talent instead. Paul Bryant was an opera singer, and pretty good at it, but a cosy operatic life was no substitute for the raw edge that only the School of Hard Knocks can provide. I can still remember Jay cooped up in the sound booth going nuts into the microphone, making even a silly LEGO minifig sound amazing - and at the time thinking (quite innocently) that he'd make a great claustrophic character. Category:Characters